The present invention relates to interactive entertainment systems, such as interactive television or interactive computing network systems, and to electronic program guides which operate in conjunction with these systems. In particular, the invention relates to methods and systems for notifying clients concerning electronic presentations that are being or are about to be broadcast.
Television viewers are very familiar with printed programming schedules that appear in daily newspapers or weekly magazines, such as TV Guide(copyright). The printed program guide lists the various television shows in relation to their scheduled viewing time on a day-to-day basis.
Cable TV systems often include a channel with a video broadcast of the printed program guide. The cable channel is dedicated to displaying listings of programs available on the different available channels. The listings are commonly arranged in a grid. Each column of the grid represents a particular time slot, such as 4:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Each row represents a particular broadcast or cable channel, such as ABC, PBS, or ESPN. The various scheduled programs or shows are arranged within the rows and columns, indicating the channels and times at which they can be found. The grid is continuously scrolled vertically so that a viewer can scan a continuously refreshing set of programs within three or four time slots.
Newer, interactive cable distribution systems feature electronic program guides (EPGs) which function somewhat similar to the broadcast program listing channels described above. Rather than scrolling automatically, however, an EPG allows a viewer to use a remote control device to scroll as desired both horizontally and vertically through a program grid. This functionality utilizes the two-way communications capabilities of interactive cable systems.
The EPG is typically implemented in software which runs on a set-top box (STB) connected between a TV and a cable system home entry line. When scrolling to a new column or row, the set-top box inserts the appropriate programming information into each new row or column. This information is either cached at the STB, or requested from the cable system""s head-end.
Printed programming schedules, video broadcasts of programming schedules and EPGs all suffer a drawback in that a user who is interested in viewing a particular program must be diligent in monitoring for the program of interest so that they do not miss it. For example, a user must physically review printed or broadcast programming schedules, as well as EPGs in order to find a particular program of interest and the time when it is going to be broadcast. They must then be diligent in remembering when the show is being broadcast so that they can view it. Typically, and because programming guides change regularly (e.g. weekly or monthly), users must continuously consult the new programming guides to see what shows have been scheduled for subsequent time periods. Having to regularly and diligently consult programming guides can be inconvenient for users and can take them away from activities where their time might be more productively spent.
This problem is not, however, confined to the world of television. Specifically, there are other media over which xe2x80x9cprogramsxe2x80x9d of interest or, more broadly, xe2x80x9celectronic presentationsxe2x80x9d are broadcast. For example, electronic presentations can be broadcast over a network such as the Internet and viewed on client viewing devices such as personal computers. An example of such an electronic presentation includes, without limitation, streaming multimedia broadcasts (e.g. audio, video, graphical, etc.). With a wide variety of sources of electronic presentations, it can become a daunting task for a user to sift through all of the potential presentations to find the ones that they want to view. In addition, many times a user will want only to view certain events within a particular presentation and not the whole presentation itself. Yet, in order to view the events of interest, a user must typically monitor the entire presentation or at least a large portion of it. For example, a user might only be interested, when watching a football game, in viewing third downs, touchdowns, half time and end-of-game shows. As another example, a user might be interested in a particular streaming multimedia conference of CEOs of high tech companies, but may only want to hear Bill Gates speak. If the user does not know specifically when Bill Gates is to speak, then they may have to watch a good portion of the presentation. As can be appreciated, having to watch an entire presentation in order to view only those portions of particular interest is wasteful.
Accordingly, this invention arose out of concerns associated with improving the user experience insofar as being able to efficiently select and view one or more electronic presentations.
Methods and systems for enabling users to register for notifications pertaining to electronic presentations of interest are described. The inventive methods and systems enable users to monitor many different electronic presentations without physically connecting to them for continuous play. Users can opt to monitor for the occurrence of an electronic presentation itself, or for events that might occur within various electronic presentations. The events can be monitored live through the use of meta information that is generated as the electronic broadcast is about to be, or is being broadcast. The meta information can be generated manually or automatically.
In one aspect, one or more notification servers are provided that link various sources of electronic presentations and client processing devices that are operated by users. The notification server(s) manages one or more databases. The databases are used to maintain and update user information that describes electronic presentations that may be of particular interest to a user, as well as source information (meta information) that describes aspects of the electronic presentation that the source is broadcasting. The meta information can be received fairly continuously throughout the broadcast of a presentation so that the source information that is maintained by the notification server can be updated. An analysis/search engine uses the source information to search the user information to identify users that have registered for notifications related to the current source information. If a user is found to have registered for a notification associated with the current source information, the notification server generates and sends such a notification. The user, once notified, can opt to connect directly to the source of the electronic presentation so that they can receive a continuous feed of the presentation.
The user information that is registered with the notification server can include many different types of data including topical data that can describe topics of interest, key word data that describes key words of interest, and names of particular individuals to name just a few. Thus, a user is not required to register for notifications based only upon the name of a particular presentation.
Other aspects of the invention include unique user interfaces that enable users to both register for the notifications and track the electronic presentations that are currently being monitored by the notification server.